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Create AccountHariot Georgina Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, viceregal consort and diplomat (born 5 February 1843 in Killyleagh, [Northern] Ireland; died 25 October 1936 in London, England).
Anne Brown, née Nelson, wife, mother (born 1827 in Edinburgh, Scotland; died 6 May 1906 in Edinburgh).
Mathieu Da Costa (depending on the language of the documents that mention his name, also known as “Mateus Da Costa,” “Mathieu de Coste,” “Matheus de Cost” and “een Swart genamd Matheu”), interpreter (dates and places of birth and death unknown). Da Costa is one of the most fascinating and elusive figures in the early history of Canada. Historians consider him the first Black person known to have visited Canada, probably in the company of Pierre Dugua de Mons and Samuel de Champlain. But many aspects of his life remain unclear or unknown.
Glenn Herbert Gould (born Gold), pianist, broadcaster, writer, composer, conductor, organist (born 25 September 1932 in Toronto, ON; died 4 October 1982 in Toronto, ON).
Abraham Ulrikab (born 29 January 1845 in Hebron, Labrador; died 13 January 1881 in Paris, France) was one of eight Labrador Inuit to die from smallpox while travelling through Europe as part of an ethnographic show (now called human zoos). In 2011, his skeleton, along with that of four other Inuit, was uncovered in the reserves of the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History) in Paris. The Nunatsiavut government (See Labrador Inuit) is studying the possibility of having them repatriated.
Theodore “Ted” Stanley King, civil rights activist, real estate broker, accountant, railway porter (born 14 July 1925 in Calgary; died 7 July 2001 in Surrey, BC). Ted King was the president of the Alberta Association for the Advancement of Coloured People from 1958 to 1961, where he advocated for the rights of Black Canadians. In 1959, King launched a legal challenge against a Calgary motel’s discriminatory policy, decades before human rights protections existed throughout Canada. The case made it to the Alberta Supreme Court. Though it was not successful, King’s case exposed legal loopholes innkeepers exploited in order to deny lodging to Black patrons.
The great Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen clung grimly to the tiller of his little ship Gjøa. Adrift in the remote waters of Simpson Strait, the Gjøa had just spent two agonizing weeks in August 1905 avoiding the death grip of the polar ice. Over and over the exhausted crew begged Amundsen to turn back. Haggard and ill, he had not eaten for days and he dared not sleep. He knew that his dream of sailing across the top of the world was within his grasp.
Mina Benson's background did not suggest she would one day perform a feat of wilderness exploration that no other woman has ever approached. Her husband, writer Leonidas Hubbard Jr, was her connection with wilderness exploration, but in a way that neither could have foreseen, nor wished.
On March 19, 1687, somewhere in the trackless wilderness of southern Texas, the French explorer Cavalier de La Salle approached the camp of a party he had sent ahead to find food. La Salle sensed that something was wrong and shouted "Where is my nephew?" "Gone to the dogs," was the reply.
Radiant sunshine bathed the Island of Montreal on the morning of May 18th, 1642. The hawthorns and wild cherry trees were in blossom and the meadow, where a group of French colonists had set up an altar, was dotted with trilliums and violets. Father Vimont celebrated mass, and declared that the new settlement, which they called Ville-Marie, was "only a grain of mustard seed... I have no doubt that this small seed will produce a tall tree that will bring forth wonders some day."
“Freedom and a Farm.” The promise was exciting to the thousands of African Americans, most seeking to escape enslavement, who fought in British regiments during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). Following the war, they joined tens of thousands of Loyalists — American refugees who had sided with the British. Between 80,000 and 100,000 Loyalists eventually fled the United States. About half came to British North America. The main waves arrived in 1783 and 1784. The territory that now includes the Maritime provinces became home to more than 30,000 Loyalists. Most of coastal Nova Scotia received Loyalist settlers, as did Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island (then called St. John’s Island).
"Five!? There are five? My God! What am I going to do with five babies?" exclaimed Oliva Dionne on May 28, 1934, when his wife Elzire delivered quintuplets. Elzire managed only to gasp "Holy Mary!" as she realized that their family had increased from seven to 12.
Born in Toronto in 1867 and raised in Woodstock, Ont., Joe Boyle was an extraordinarily restless young man. At age 17 he went to New York with his father and hopped an outbound ship, spending three years at sea.
The English race gets continually into the most unheard of scrapes all over the world by reason of its insular prejudices and superiority to advice; but somehow they muddle through and when they do they are on the ground to hold it. Manitoba Free Press, December 1903
Between 1942 and 1947, the Canadian government brought 47,783 "war brides” and their 21,950 children to Canada. Most of these women were from Great Britain, where Canadian forces had been based during the Second World War. Although the voyage and transition were difficult for many war brides, most persevered and grew to love their adopted homeland.
Born in London of Welsh parents, David Thompson was an outsider, struggling to find a foothold in the empire that had consumed his country. He described himself as a solitary traveler, unknown to the world.
Canada is a hard country to govern, observed John A. Macdonald, Canadas first Prime Minister. Its also a hard country in which to get elected.
On 24 July 1967, during a state visit to Expo '67, General Charles de Gaulle, president of France and a hero of the 20th century, proclaimed from the balcony of Montréal's City Hall a sentence that would change the history of Canada: “Vive le Québec libre.”
The story of the CCF began during the Great Depression. The stock market crash of 1929 and a lengthy drought devastated the economy. Neither Prime Minister Mackenzie King and his Liberals nor R.B. Bennett and the Conservative Opposition were inclined to do anything, believing that the economic crisis required no extraordinary measures.
